A Toast to 20 Winters

The 4th of July is the 19th anniversary of our family living at "The Laurels". And this year marks our 20th Winter here in Penrose. We usually celebrate each anniversary with a meal prepared from our home grown produce. In the past we have incorporated preserves in the meal: bottled peaches, frozen blueberries, dried tomatoes and various chutneys. This year we decided to prepare the meal ONLY from fresh produce rather than preserves. Given that it is the middle of winter here and we recently had an overnight temperature of MINUS 5.8 degrees C, using FRESH ingredients might seem to be a bit of a challenge. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that we were still able to rustle up 20 veggies, 9 herbs, 7 salad greens and 5 fruit that were either growing in the garden or ripening in the kitchen. A total of over 40 different food plants. Not bad for a mid Winter harvest.
And the menu for tonight's meal?
First course was a leek and potato soup using Perennial Leeks and freshly dug Potatoes simmered in a rich stock made from home grown veggies.The milk and cream added were not ours ...............but if we had a house cow.....

Second course was a vegetable quiche stuffed with Alexanders, Flowering Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cauliflower, Celery, Kale, Mushroom Plant, Radicchio, Shallots, Silverbeet, Smallage and Spinach. The herbs used to flavour the quiche were Kitchen Chives, Garlic Chives, Society Garlic, Oregano, Parsley, Sage, Mexican Tarragon and Caraway Thyme. The quiche was topped with slivers of roasted Jerusalem Artichokes and Purple Congo Potatoes. As our chooks are currently off the lay I must confess to using someone else's eggs this year. Our chooks have been given notice to get back to the job or to make room for some more obliging feathered friends. The cheese used in the quiche was also not ours............., but if we had a house cow.....

Accompanying the quiche was a tossed salad consisting of Lettuces, Land Cress, Mizuna, Mustard Greens, Rocket, Salad Burnett, Tomatoes, Green pepper (just the one - grown in the glasshouse) and Water Chestnuts. The Kumato, Tiny Tim and Yellow Pear tomatoes were picked a few weeks ago and have been slowly ripening in the kitchen.

Third course was a fresh fruit salad featuring Cape Gooseberry, Kiwi fruit, Pepino, Persimmon and Prickly Pear. Once the frosts start, fruit left outside either shrivels or is devoured by greedy birds so most fruit, except the Prickly Pear, is brought inside to ripen. The fruit salad would have gone well with fresh cream..............if only we had a house cow...

We toasted our 20th Winter here at Penrose with a jug of mulled wine made from home grown grapes infused with herbs and spices - our one concession to using bottled preserves.
With only two people now living at "The Laurels" we don't need to grow a LOT of veggies and fruit. The veggie garden, established on permaculture principles, is remarkable for the diversity of plants growing in a small area. Most of the plants quietly go about surviving the winter cold by bravely facing up to the chill or by huddling beneath a protective mulch. Some, such as the mizuna, have brazenly gone feral and are colonising any spare soil in sight. So far this year we are yet to have a comfrey killer frost but once the comfrey dies back then most of the surviving veggies will go into hibernation until the warmer weather arrives. Until that happens, we hunter-gather from the garden.
I like to think that self-sufficiency is a journey rather than a destination and so far we've had a fairly interesting trip. We've had some notable successes propagating unusual seeds and growing unorthodox plants. We've found some fascinating plants, some of which we continue to plant and harvest and others that we have learned to live without.
An anniversary such as this gives us the opportunity to consider our ways (and means) and to plot future directions. The permaculture lifestyle has been a successful ingredient in our life so far but there are many more things that we would still like to achieve: a working windmill, solar panels on the roof, a slow combustion stove in the kitchen.....the list goes on. Integrating animals into the permaculture pattern is important too and so far we have road tested sheep, goats, chooks, bees and of course our resident pig. Perhaps we might expand the menagerie in the future to include the odd duck, turkey or rabbit. And then, of course, between the pig and the wombat, there's always room for a house cow.............